Do you remember The Friz? Also, known as the BEST teacher ever! I've used so many of her books in the classroom and the shows were so well done! I remember being so excited when my son was little and finally old enough to be interested watching The Magic School Bus! I can actually hear the kids saying, "Ralphie!" just thinking about it!

I've dressed up as Ms. Frizzle twice even! Once when Scholastic sent a costume to the school I was teaching at and I volunteered to be the mascot for the book fair. The second time, I had my mom help make a bee themed jumper dress. I found perfect outrageous earrings and a fantastic red wig! My class was studying bees at the time. I made a large yellow paper beehive bus just like the one in the book. My 2nd graders helped me carry it in the school Halloween parade. Such great memories! Maybe I'll see if I can dig out a photo of that day? Maybe not.....

What inspired my thoughts of Ms. Frizzle today? I saw this shirt on Pinterest today and I just LOVE it. Not only because I love The Friz, but because I love to run and this is just a perfect motivating thought! I sure wouldn't want to miss that bus!

PS. Professor McGonagall actually ties the Friz for best teacher ever....and I've dressed up as her too!

I love my Christmas tree. It's a 12 foot pre-lit tree we bought at Costco in Thousand Oaks. I'm guessing 2004, maybe? Anyhow it's fantastic and TALL. The term pre-lit doesn't really apply any more, but I'm not ready to give it up yet. To be honest I haven't seen any trees I like near as much.

SO...last year we modified it and took out the bottom section. It's now a 10 foot tree with a slightly narrower base. Good thing for space reasons and safety too. We aren't getting any younger you know!
We knew when putting it away last Christmas that we weren't even going to attempt to use the pre-lit lights this year. Instead we used the zillion lights we had from the year we built the parade float. Sweet! It looked pretty good. I probably need more than a zillion to make it look the way I'd really like. That and I can see all the non-working pre-lit lights & wires. Others said they aren't really noticeable. I think they are wrong.

Thus, I attempted the removal of pre-lit lights and wires as we took the
tree down this year. I started in the middle and did a branch or two
and then I remembered we had taken off the very top section already. It
being only a small section I could sit down and comfortably remove the
lights from it first. OMG! I CAN'T believe how many lights are on that
one itty bitty section and how long it took me to unwind them all.
Needless to say, I think the remaining 8.5 feet of tree will likely
still have dead lights and wires on them again next year. But hey...way
at the top of my tree....you know 10 feet up....there won't be any
wires for me to notice. gah.

I did it! All by myself! The trains are usually not my department. The boys set them up and take them down each year. Puzzles are also not my department. Not only do I not enjoy them, I am also not very good at them....probably why I don't enjoy them. Duh! Putting this away was both dealing with trains and puzzles...and much to my GREAT surprise it did not take me near as long as I was expecting it to! I did however, take this picture so that next year should I be stuck with the task of putting it away it will be even faster. Wonder if I should tell the boys I have this handy dandy answer key next year? ;-)